Oriflame Direct Sellers Santa Benga and Matt Brown Featured in National Media: “How I Manage My Money”

As recently published in inews.co.uk, and featured by dsa.org.uk, Santa Benga and Matt Brown are a couple about to be married, who also run a direct selling business with Oriflame in their spare time. They were recently featured in UK national media.

READ THE ARTICLE HERE:

“How I manage my money”

 

In our How I Manage My Money series we aim to find out how people in the UK are spending, saving and investing money to meet their costs and achieve their goals.

This week, we speak to Santa Benga, 39, and Matt Brown, 46, who live in Plymouth, with their dog, Max.

Santa works in business development, while Matt is a careers advisor. The couple also run a direct selling business with Swedish beauty brand Oriflame together in their spare time.

The couple’s approach to money has improved since they’ve been together. Both have cleared their debts and are actively investing each month. The couple are happy renting and don’t want the burden of buying and paying for the upkeep of a home.

Santa and Matt share: 

We met in Rome on a business trip within the direct selling sector in April 2023 and have been inseparable ever since.

Before we met, we’d both been in debt and lived beyond our means. This is something which used to cause us both significant stress and worry. Saving money never really happened, and anything that was saved would quickly be spent.

Since getting together, we have learned some valuable lessons in money management, including paying for things in full by saving up for them and not being so impulsive when it comes to spending.

In terms of managing our finances as a couple, we now have a solid understanding of each other’s accounts and finances. This has been developed through trust. We’ve agreed that our limit to spending without mentioning it to each other would be around £80.

We both work different main jobs, bringing in a combined income of around £4,700 a month, but as a couple, we also run our own Oriflame direct selling business together.

Oriflame is a member of the Direct Selling Association and we sell skincare and beauty products, as well as vitamin supplements.

The income from our direct selling business is between £300 to £600 a month. We would love to make £100,000 a year from our direct selling business in the future and hope to achieve this within the next two years.

The extra money we make via our direct selling business is being ploughed into our wedding pot. When the word wedding is mentioned, extra zeros seem to get added to the end of every price!

Our wedding is in April at a church in Preston. It’s a small wedding with around 35 guests. Initially we thought it would cost around £3,000 as it’s a low-key wedding.

However, factoring in food, venues, travel and the honeymoon, we reckon it will cost about £15,000.

The rent for our four-bedroom, semi-detached house is £1,300 a month. We are not looking to buy a property as we don’t like the cost of buying, upkeep and financial burden that comes with it. For us, it’s not worth saving a few extra pounds a month by buying.

We like the flexibility of renting and the option to move more regularly.

Plus, the savings we made by avoiding maintenance costs and building insurance are useful. We use the money to make investments instead. We add £100 a month to investments with Trading212. Our cash savings are low as so much money is being used up for the wedding.

Santa has no money in pensions and is not paying into one. Matt has an income coming in from a Royal Navy pension taken early after 27 years in the service, and adds £90 a month to his current workplace one.

We’re certainly not planning on sitting back and waiting for any pension money to keep us warm when we are older.

Money comes and goes, and we can always find ways to improve our financial situation by looking at the problem head on and working out how to solve it.

Our biggest driving force is what we can do for others if we have more.

This is something deeply rooted within us a couple and in our faith as Christians.

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From the BFH Team: Huge Congrats to Santa & Matt! 

SOURCES: inews.co.uk and dsa.org.uk